Power

May 2015

Artist Statement

Power uses the aesthetic of data visualization to explore the relationship between women’s movements, poetry, science and technology. It is part of an ongoing exploration of the use of poetry as the data of women’s movements.

There is a power struggle that has traditionally existed between the natural and social sciences, with the latter usually losing when it comes to credibility. Meanwhile, feminist poetry has served as a science in it’s own right as it has been used as a tool to explore theories and coin new terms. To deconstruct the false dichotomy between the social and natural sciences, Power uses code to visualize three feminist poems two of which concentrate on one of natural science’s most famous woman physicist and chemist, Marie Curie while the third focuses on women’s bodies, academia and power. The images, code and poetry in Power work as a whole to explore the diversity of ways that women have claimed power while at the same time exploring its nuances and complicating power as a concept.

Project Description

Power is a graphic installation comprised of six framed data visualizations and code samples and a shelf that holds three poem descriptions. The shelf is fixed to the wall just below chest level with the the three poems placed on top and equally spaced out along the length of the shelf to be used as descriptors for the corresponding visualization and code sample. The three poems that act as the data set for Power are To Madame Curie by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Power by Adrienne Rich, and I am Enough by Carrie Rudzinski and Terisa Siagatonu. The data visualizations and code samples are each equally spaced along the same length of the shelf with the corresponding data visualization placed above the code sample.